Printer Adding Co-Generation Power Plant

TOLEDO, OH—Whenever Frank Beaumont looks into his crystal ball, he sees a majority of commercial printers utilizing their own electricity generating plants in the not-too-distant future. The public relations director for NTA Graphics, based here, will soon be able to look out his office window and see that future.

For NTA, the future is now thanks in part to state-backed revenue bonds that are financing a $3.5 million electricity generating plant at its 63-acre complex in North Toledo. The bonds were authorized by the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority in June after approving NTA Graphics' proposal to build its own pollutant-free power facility for its presses, auxiliary equipment and offices.

The co-generation plant, slated for ground-breaking sometime shortly after Thanksgiving Day, 2000, will allow NTA to produce its own electricity at about half the cost of buying it from a local utility company. The company will also install zero-pollution natural gas-fired engines to generate the electricity instead of tapping public utility fossil-fuel burning generators that emit pollutants into the air, according to Beaumont.

Supplying its own electricity will result in an estimated 50 percent annual savings, which NTA estimates to be $430,000.

"This has nothing to do with deregulation of utilities or their voodoo rates and schemes," states Greg Tremonti, NTA president. "It's solid business sense, cost-savings and a survival strategy that benefits our company, our customers and our workforce."

NTA qualified for state-backed, tax-exempt municipal bonds because of multi-beneficial qualities and economies of a co-generation power plant and the company's "environmentally conscientious" reputation, according to Beaumont.

The co-generating equipment, to be housed in a 40x80-foot building adjoining NTA's 225,000-square-foot printing complex, will capture enormous heat blankets from the gas-fired engines and convert them for heating and cooling, create compressed steam and provide compressed air supplies.

Further savings will be achieved through retrofitting 260 1950s-era fluorescent fixtures with energy-saving units, using natural gas to fuel its forklift truck fleet instead of propane tanks, supplying power to three other on-site businesses and using sophisticated, computerized control panels to ensure "100 percent clean" electricity from its generating units.